Fifth Grave Past the Light by Darynda Jones

gaze hard. But just as he felt my compassion, I felt the cut it left, the wound.
    “I don’t feel sorry for you,” I said.
    He scoffed and pushed off the door to head back to his kitchen. “And once again she lies.”
    Regret consumed me. I didn’t want to fight with him. “I’m not so much lying as trying to keep the peace.”
    “Then you should probably walk away.”

4
     
    I’m a virgin. But this is an old shirt.
    — T - SHIRT
     
    I glanced over at a message board he had on the wall. It had dark cork on it and silver pushpins, but only one note had been tacked onto it. I walked closer and recognized the handwriting. It was the bill I’d presented him a couple of weeks ago. The one I’d written on a Macho Taco receipt. The one that stated one Mr. Reyes Farrow owed Davidson Investigations a cool million. With interest. He’d kept it. That ridiculous bill.
    And a new realization dawned. We were fighting. Well, we always fought, but we were fighting like real couples did. In an apartment with him flesh and blood and me flesh and blood and him so adorably sexy, he could melt the polar ice caps.
    We were almost kind of sort of like a real couple. And he’d kept my bill.
    The noise level rose in the kitchen as Reyes banged dishes. Slammed doors. Quite possibly threw a pan. It was enough to make my heart burst with joy. Walk away from him now? I would rather swim through broken glass.
    He stopped what he was doing and though I couldn’t see him from my vantage point, he called out, “What?”
    Could he feel my abrupt change of emotion? Did I give a crap? Not so much.
    Whatever tomorrow brought, tonight he was mine. Sure he might be burning down half of Albuquerque, but he’d targeted condemned buildings and shoddily constructed cubbyholes that were eyesores anyway. Nobody missed the shacks he torched, and the owners were collecting a heap of nice coin from the insurance companies for their piles of rubble.
    He was doing Albuquerque a favor.
    He was a hero!
    Okay, that might have been stretching it a bit, but still…
    “Double or nothing!” I called out to him.
    After a moment, he stepped around a wall, his forehead crinkled in mild interest.
    “Double or nothing,” I repeated.
    He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall. “I’m listening.”
    “I’ll make you a bet. You can win your money back. Every cent. But if you lose, I get double.”
    “And what money would that be?”
    “The million you owe me.”
    “Ah.” He thought for a minute, then asked, “And just how do I manage to do that?”
    “Uh-uh-uh,” I said, stepping closer. “You’re going to owe me
two
million if you lose. Are you sure you don’t want to think about it? Perhaps put it on the back burner, let it simmer?”
    His gaze took a leisurely tour of my body, pausing on my girls, Danger and Will Robinson, before continuing. “I’m pretty sure I’m up for whatever you throw at me.”
    “It’s your funeral, buddy.” I looked around his apartment and found just the thing. After retrieving a tieback off his curtains, I walked back to him and explained the rules. “Okay, you have to trust me. Stand here and put your hands behind your back.”
    He pushed off the wall and walked over to me, his expression wary but intrigued. “Is this going to hurt?”
    “Only your bank account.”
    He did as instructed, putting his hands behind his back.
    “Do you trust me?” I asked.
    “As far as I can throw you.”
    “Good enough.” He was strong. He could probably toss me a goodly distance.
    I tied his wrists together behind his back, and while I knew his history, knew all the horrible memories that could surface with that one act, I also hoped this would begin to form a bond of trust between us. A thread of peace. He had to know that I would not hurt him. True, I couldn’t hurt him physically if I wanted to, but he had to know that sentiment applied to our emotional relationship as well.
    He tilted his head.